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Sunday, July 5, 2009

My neighbor, the farmer, has a big farm.With chickens and tractors and pigeons and barns.It has pickles and carrots,It has sickles and parrots.He keeps pigs and cows and bottle-necked sheepAll penned in their places, at night they would sleep.

Over all of these things their dog makes sureThat nothing can harm them, not even a bur.

Over tractors and parrots and barns he keeps watchChecking pickles and carrots and sickles for spotsHe herds chickens and pigeons and bottle-necked sheepKeeping cows, pigs and piglets all safe in their sleep.

There are many things funny you find on a farmbut only a few are cause for alarm.One of the things that may happen at timesIs a serious thing that makes for good rhymes.

Occurring in mammals, this thing that we discussWithin one of the species it really makes fuss.This thing that I speak of is known of as "bloat"The beast that most gets it is known as a goat.

And thus, my dear friends, the story beginsIn a field on a farm right next to the hens.

You see, my good neighbor had just received(as a gift from my grandpa on All Hallow's Eve)A goat with three horns and one with but twoAnd wouldn't you know it, they both had the flu.

Luck'ly for them, the bottle-necked sheepAre real good at nursing; they revived in a week.But just one month later a new sickness fellLeaving both of those goats not feeling too well.

You see, those poor goats had gotten the bloatFrom something they ate while drinking a coke.

Bee bumbles and struddles they ate with a smileSlurping and burping their cokes all the while.

"Why, don't they know?", you will cry out and ask,"That doing such things will make you pass gas?"

Well, what you don't know is the poor brothers goatHad never passed grade school and learned about "bloat."So they ate and they drank and got all gassed upBut then something happened, they seemed to be stuck.

They felt the gurgling burgling deep down belowBut nothing they did would cause them to blow.They tried pills and drinks that promised a fixand ended up worse, and then got the fits.

Now the fits are just bad, if you don't knowThey make you grab needle and thread and sew.(Now sewing isn't bad if you like to make dressesBut for goats with the bloat it just adds more messes.)

Well, the three-horned goat, whose name was Mo MileyDecided to go to the doctor, Bill Highly.Bill prodded and poked and looked down his throatAnd said "You, good sir, are down with the bloat!"

Now Mo was just angry at the doc's diagnosis,he already knew that very prognosis.But his two-horned brother, who lived by the dam,said "Don't worry, my brother, we'll get fixed by Shazam."

Shazam was the monkey at the Round Barn Golf Course(who lived next to Grumpy, the crazy pole horse)He made a living by making gray gooThat gets rid of the bloat but makes you turn blue.

So the two brother goat, who were sick with the bloatWent down to the golf course, (the one with the moat)

When they got to the bridge to get to ShazamWho might have the thing that could cure them, Ka-blam!They fell in the water, those goats with the bloat,And wouldn't you know it, away they did float.

They floated on down the TippecanoeAnd down the Wabash to the St. Louis zoo.And now those poor brothers are on displayAs "The Goats With the Bloat That Won't Go Away."